It All Looks the Same

First off, sorry this post is so late. I came to see if I had any comments only to discover I saved it as a draft and never posted it.

So here goes. . .

No one really says much against children's literature unless they are in a field that has something to do with child development. Children's books are cute and colorful to the average children's book viewer. Young adult literature doesn't get as many fluffy points. When I ask readers at our level (many of whom spent highschool reading what is defined as Literature) why they tend to disparage young adult literature, the main answer I get is that it all looks the same: a young teen character who either enters the book looking for answers or discovers questions about themselves and goes on a journey to figure them out. They all follow the same teen novel format. I feel that much of this attitude towards young adult literature can be blamed on marketing techniques. We ourselves have read books from a vastly different genres (adventure, historical, gay/lesbian, poetic) in this class and found that each one was a self discovery novel. Yet each author takes the idea of a young adult novel, even if they don't start out with the intention of writing young adult, and makes it his or her own.

I always enjoyed young adult literature for its purpose but never analyzed it as closely as we do in this class. Looking back at the novels that I have read, I realize how even archetypal characters are so different in each author's words. Despite marketing ploys to categorize young adult literature, each book is unique. I always appreciated the skill required to create a book for, lets face it, people who don't really read. Through our careful reading, I now better appreciate the technical skills involved in writing these books. Prevalent archetypes are so common because they are successful. They also give readers a degree of familiarity with a book that could keep them reading. However, readers wouldn't keep reading the same thing over and over again. The archetypes are not the overpowering force in these books. It's the individual skills of the authors, and the way they make the story their own by exploring topics that are relevant to young readers that keeps young adult literature going. There is much mature content in young adult literature, and dealing with such topics as part of the self discovery of a young person probably makes it easier to keep it proper for the audience the books are intended for.